Please don't make any enhancement optional!
ankheg
Member Posts: 546
I started to read all the requested features and there of course a lot of debate and arguments which is good. But they are usually ending the same: "make it optional"!
Well, I have my own preferences about horns on helmetes or sound of spell casting, paperdoll graphics etc. But I'll accept any decision you make regardless, just make one! Why? Because the alternative is that everyone can adjust everything, everybody has a different BG. You are creating a GAME not an editor, or worse, a game with optional modpacks. I am quite sure that if someone is still bothered the shield animation or something there will be a mod for that. But that shouldn't be a part of the official game! It would be amateurish like hell.
Just imageine you are playing a pen and paper rpg.
DM: You fond a golden rectangular buckler!
PC1: Rectangular? Thats silly I want to find a round one!
PC2: My character thinks it's not golden at all. It's silver!
Sorry for my bad english and I don't want to insult anyone, but I am a purist, and I belive that customisation of everything is for mods.
Well, I have my own preferences about horns on helmetes or sound of spell casting, paperdoll graphics etc. But I'll accept any decision you make regardless, just make one! Why? Because the alternative is that everyone can adjust everything, everybody has a different BG. You are creating a GAME not an editor, or worse, a game with optional modpacks. I am quite sure that if someone is still bothered the shield animation or something there will be a mod for that. But that shouldn't be a part of the official game! It would be amateurish like hell.
Just imageine you are playing a pen and paper rpg.
DM: You fond a golden rectangular buckler!
PC1: Rectangular? Thats silly I want to find a round one!
PC2: My character thinks it's not golden at all. It's silver!
Sorry for my bad english and I don't want to insult anyone, but I am a purist, and I belive that customisation of everything is for mods.
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Comments
Things like the level cap and/or difficulty levels can make or break a game. I feel very strongly about those and there other people who very strongly disagree with me. I see no reason why the game developers should ruin the game experience for one group over another, so if they're just options people can choose than everyone wins.
Besides from that just imagine multiplayer with different level caps...
There should be a kind of canonical version. And if somebody cannot live with or without levelcap or something else there will be a mod I am sure of it. They've managed it in the past.
If you make things like that optional it will look like the game isn't really finished. And it's not the players job to finish it.
In a way a game is a "democratic issue." I can choose not to buy it. If enough people choose not to buy it based on poor design, maybe they'll fix it. If they don't, they won't get our votes (money).
In multiplayer everyone is on the same team so if one player's character was more powerful than another's it wouldn't matter because they aren't competing. Even without the level-cap some players' characters would be more powerful than others simply because the characters that each player starts with are based on how much they played the game before they imported them. This has been the case in every multiplayer game I've ever played, even before my characters passed the level cap.
Edit: Also, I've played many other games, where there are many more customizable options than in Baldur's Gate. They didn't appear less professional because of the options they provided. The options are what made them fun. If you take Civilization IV, for example, you can set the number of players, have players playing on different difficulty settings within the same game, set the victory conditions to one or more of several different options, allow players to choose if players survive until their last unit is destroyed or until they lose their last city, how much technology trading (if any) is allowed, etc. Civilization IV is one of my favorite computer games. I like it because I can choose which settings I play on. My dad and some of my friends also like to play Civilization IV. They like some of the same settings I do, but also like some that are different. This if fine, because we can play our own games and all have fun. It does not harm or threaten me in any way if my dad or friends play on a different setting than I do, so I do not see why this would be any different in Baldur's Gate. I have also played Civilization V. However, in Civilization V there are much fewer options. There are still some choices but they got rid of every setting that I actually like to play and didn't replace them with anything. The result is that I exercised my democratic right to not vote for Civilization V by not buying such an inferior product. My hope is that others will do so too and that Civilization VI, if there is one, will be more inclusive than its predecessor.
I just want to be able to buy a game that works when I buy it and that I don't have to troubleshoot a bunch of third party software that may or may not work on my computer just to be able to do really basic things in the game like level-up my characters.
Friend: "[RomulanPaladin], you've got to realize one day that we're just players in a woman's game. It's like D&D. They're the DMs. They call the shots, make all the decisions, and come up with all the rules. We're just the players."
Myself: "And it is my duty as a player to complain, fuss, and argue about every ruling every chance I get."
In fact, a huge number of the "enhancements" being made in the EEs are based on ideas the PLAYERS came up with and perhaps even implemented over the years.
The entire notion that we should embrace whatever we're given because that was the intended vision -- something believed by a lot of game developers who start thinking too much of themselves and their understanding of what makes a good game -- is exactly why we haven't seen games like the BGs for over a decade, why instead of KotOR 3 KotOR fans got a bad novel and an MMO that butchered elements of the story and characters from the games they loved, and so on.
There's nothing holy about game developers. Games are art, but games are also GAMES, not statues or paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Baldur's Gate was made at a time when developers were players and they made games for other people like themselves. The EE should reflect that attitude to the extent possible IMO.
I think you're a bit off about Bioware's interest in modding. They really didn't invest in it until NWN's Aurora Engine, and I'd bet that was more financially motivated than anything else. They realized that if players were heavily invested in a game and kept it around on their hard drives, then they were more likely to buy expansion packs, DLC, and potential sequels.
There are some great BG mods out there but that's despite the Infinity Engine, not because of it. From memory, it doesn't seem to me that BG modding really took off until years after these games had all been released.
OP: "A game is not a democratic issue after they made it. Like a DM's choice it's absolute. Creating a game is like making a statement, it reflects its creators views about certain things. "
There's obviously a disconnect here between whether the devs provide a system with options and guidance -- like all the old DnD rulebooks, handbooks, sourcebooks, and adventures I own -- where a player still makes rule/gameplay choices as a DM while also playing a character in the video game itself, or whether the devs are the DM and should be the official arbiter of all rules and content in "their" game. There was a time when the game effectively belonged to the players from a philosophical standpoint, and therefore they were DMing their "own" game within the setting and story provided; the way the developers treated games like the BGs and the alterations made to them reflected that philosophy.
That is the heart of my argument. Providing options -- including options to remove some perceived enhancements to return to an experience closer to the original -- reflects that philosophy. Yes, the modders possibly COULD do it, but as we both acknowledge, the pros would do it better. If making something specific to the EE into an option is viable, I would rather the devs produce the option than the players, not just for my selfish interests, since at this point I don't necessarily have an idea whether I prefer a given enhancement or not, but for the sake of any fellow player who would take up a given option. Yes, I've heard it before. "They're pros, therefore you should enjoy what they think you should enjoy. If you don't like something about the game, then sorry, but you're wrong."
Yes, I know, "That's not what I said." Everyone who follows the development of games they hope to enjoy has heard it all before, including my own take.
I think I'll pass on being another drone for another game developer, thank you. That's no disrespect intended to the people who made the BGs and have put in a lot of hard work on BGEE. I simply reject the notion that I should not lobby for certain "improvements" I'd be interested in to prove -- to myself and/or others -- that I'm a bigger fan than the other rabble. The Bioware forums launched in 2001. BG was only 3 years old, SoA 1, and ToB just months old. BioWare dev's didn't curtail discussion on mods on the grounds that "You shouldn't do that because that's not how we intended the game to play" or "You can't discuss third-party content on the official forums." Yes, they certainly could have done more to support modders like they later did with the Aurora Engine, but they did let modders mention their mods, tweaks, and cheats and other players extoll their virtues on their forums. New players who joined in those early years were often told to go download the once-popular Baldurdash immediately and the devs never acted offended. Ascension was released by Dave Gaider to the community in late 2001 ... as a mod. In fact, rather than having some holy epiphany prior to NWN, it's more likely they saw how players altering their BG games improved the investment the player community had in them, and made this a core concept of NWN and the Aurora Engine.
In any case, yes, while BG modding may have "taken off" with PocketPlane and G3 years later, player-made tweaks and cheats really were being introduced for BG1 within a couple years, and within a few months for SoA and ToB. Go to the Baldurdash site and check out the game files and readmes still available there. Some of those fan-made tweaks, cheats, fixes, and alterations existed as early as 2000. TeamBG was a big player in BG modding in the same period. A lot of the Baldurdash and TeamBG work has since been subsumed into later "packs" but it originates from back then.
I believe in having the developers make the best game they can -- based on their preferences and biases. They should not spend much time on items/features fans "may like" or "may not". Hopefully, that will result in a game wherein all the features work together to create the best gaming experience on average for the given effort. Even so, if the developers think its a good idea, they can provide in-game adjustments -- as commonly provided during character creation.
Then, mod makers should take it upon themselves to modify the game to suit specific tastes. To that end, I hope the developers spend a little time facilitating modding -- hate to go to the hex editor to manipulate things. However, I do respect that facilitating modding takes development time; thus, not all developers will have the resources to do that. Personally, I like to mod my game a bit. I did use the hex editor on the original Baldur's Gate.
Only feature request (other than what the developers have in mind): No level cap -- or a cap so high it cannot be reached even with minor mods. Once I reach the cap, the game is over for me. By the way, support for very high levels may be limited to mere increases in hitpoints or something equally bland -- they do not have to invent new spells, for example.
Anyhow, its a bit late to comment now -- as, no doubt, Enhanced Baldur's Gate design has been long frozen.
I'm on-board with what you're saying, if I understand you correctly:
There are some features--key features--that have an effect on how the game is played. Things like XP caps, kits/no kits, new content/no new content. These things should not be optional, because they are fundamental aspects of the game's core, which is to say: by changing one or all of these things, you change the game that is experienced by players, which means that no two players will have even the basic foundation on which to discuss the game.
There are other features--"fluff" features--that are purely cosmetic, but that are nonetheless integral to the game's design. Things like the GUI, sprite usage, new portraits. These things should not be optional because they are the expression of the development team's vision, which--if you're buying the game--you're agreeing to support and utilize, at least at first.
And then there are the small features--options--that allow players to customize how their game is played. A more itemized list of difficulty options (Max HP at level up, enemies deal x2 damage, etc.), for example, or allowing players to configure the hot keys (even allowing purists to disable Tab-searching). These features are optional by their very definition because they are features that allow the player to customize the game to his or her liking. These features are basically like the Advanced Options menu in Civilization, or the Controls menu of any FPS game. They affect your experience with the game, but they do not interfere with your ability to describe the game to your friends.
None of these things I described should be hard-coded, because what makes PC games so great is the ability for modders to change them as they like. But there's a marked difference between turning off Party Infravision (a good option), and turning off Khalid and Jaheira (a bad option).